Happy fall!

For me, Labor Day marks the crossover from summer to fall. At first I was sad about it, but now I'm enjoying the cooler temperatures and the smell of the fall leaves. I feel like there was a lot I wanted to get done this summer around the house and the yard, and much of it didn't get done. But that's okay -- the winter months are still good times to work on the inside, so hopefully we can get some more rooms painted and redone as the weather gets cooler.

I have been doing some serious nesting. The upstairs is pretty much all put together right now. The rooms are bigger than I anticipated and are looking a little sparse, but that's okay. I don't like having lots of stuff just to fill space. We peeled the wallpaper off in the dining room on a whim, and now the wallpaper-less walls are starting to bother me. I'd like to get the room painted, but we need to take down the wood paneling first, and that will probably be a bigger project than we anticipate. So for now, we just have an ugly dining room! It will get done eventually. I think the bathroom will end up being our next major project. Because it's our only bathroom, the remodel will have to be carefully coordinated. We've already gathered most of the supplies we need to redo the room -- flooring, faucet, new vanity, etc. We've picked out a new tub surround and paint. We just need to block out a weekend and get it done! I don't know if it will happen before the baby comes, and that's alright, too.

I'm now in my 36th week of pregnancy. It's a little crazy. Pregnancy definitely goes by faster when you already have one child and you have a lot going on. It's starting to sink in more and more that we will have another person in our family. We have a few different names in mind, and Tony and I are looking forward to seeing what she looks like and what kind of person she becomes. I'm hoping that Ruth will adjust to it well and that she and her younger sister will grow up to be good friends. Tony and I went on a tour of the new Methodist Women's Hospital a couple of weeks ago, and it will be a great place to have the baby. They have great big whirlpool tubs in the L&D rooms, and the postpartum rooms are like mini-hotel rooms. The details of actually having the baby may get complicated depending on when she decides to come because we will have to find someone who can watch Ruth at the last minute. I am going to line up a few different people who can watch Ruth and cross my fingers that one will be available when I need them. My hope is the baby will come around her due date or later because that's when my mom has taken some time off work. But it'll work out no matter what, I'm sure.

Tony's new job is going well and he is really enjoying the management side of the business. He's been doing a great job in his classes, too, and he and Ruth have been doing a lot of fishing together in his free time. Tony recently went out and bought her a little pink Barbie pole, and she can reel in the fish all by herself now. I love watching her as she discovers new things while fishing; she gets so enthusiastic about the frogs, worms, squirrels, water bugs, ducks -- little things I often take for granted.

I have some more organizing and cleaning to do over the next few weeks, and I know the time will fly by and we will be a family of four before we know it!

Happy fall! :)

Upstairs painting

I'm a little late in posting these, but after long last, here they are:
Before:

After:

Before:

After:

The lighting isn't the best, and obviously the rooms are still a mess, but you get the idea. I'll post more pictures when we get all moved up there. It looks so much better! The color is called "Nurture" by Behr. It's a blue-gray, and I think it looks really nice upstairs - not so gray that it's depressing. It was an impulse choice. I went to the paint store with the intention of getting something totally different, saw a sample of that color, and thought, "Hmm, that might look nice." Tony convinced me to just get it. I'm a little worried that I might think it's too gray in the future, but it looks much better than before and there are so many different options for coordinating with other colors. I'm excited to get it cleaned up and decorated!

In other news, we are going to the Gardner Family Reunion this week. It was another last-minute decision. The reunion is held every three years, and I've been wanting to go so I can meet the rest of Tony's family. (And Tony wants to go for obvious reasons.) It's going to be at Beaver Mountain this year, which is in the northernmost part of Utah. We had been going back and forth about whether or not we were going to attend, and in the end we decided not to go because we just couldn't come up with the money for it. But thanks to the generosity of Tony's Dad and Diane, we are going to make the trip after all. We will drive out Wednesday and Thursday, hang out Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and then head home Sunday and Monday. The car trip will be long, but it should be a lot of fun! I have to admit, though, I've been so distracted by painting for the last week that I haven't done much to get ready. It's going to be a busy few days around here!

Tony's projects

Tony has been very handy around the house, and if it weren't for time and money constraints, I'm sure we'd have a lot more done at this point. However, Tony has finished three fairly major projects:
1. Replacing the shower head and faucet. Shortly after moving in, we found out that the faucet on our shower didn't properly switch the water over from the tub to the shower, meaning only a small trickle of water came out of the already broken shower head. We could only take baths for a few days. So Tony replaced that. And it works much, much better now.


2. Installing the dishwasher. The actual dishwasher installation wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. The part that was hard was getting it properly mounted in the space we created. We had to take out some of the cabinets to put in the dishwasher, which wasn't a big deal because we have a lot of other kitchen cabinets. Tony did a great job on this project, and I LOVE having a dishwasher. It saves me so much time.


3. Building sawhorses. We have big, BIG plans to build new furniture (check out this blog, which has some awesome plans for all kinds of furniture: www.knockoffwood.blogspot.com), but first Tony needed sawhorses upon which to build the furniture. So he built sawhorses. He did a great job and was able to use some wood he took out of an old box spring we didn't need anymore. How resourceful! His first project will be building Ruth's big girl bed, which will look like this.

He has done lots of other small projects, but those are the major things. Next up on our list is steaming off the wallpaper in the living room, bedroom, bathroom and upstairs, and then we'll redo the bathroom. We are still debating about whether or not we will totally replace the tub, tub surround and floors. We went to Home Depot yesterday and saw some really nice stuff, so it's tempting.

I've purchased slipcovers for the couches in the living room and bought Ruth a new quilt for her big girl bed. I loved this quilt when I saw it, so instead of painting her room blue, we will paint it yellow to go with the quilt.

In about three weeks, when we get back from Walt Disney World, we may be getting a kitty! We took Ruth to the Humane Society yesterday to look at them, and she had a blast. We are also going to transition Ruth to her big girl bed in April (after the bed gets built). I'm hopeful the transition will go well. We have the mattress all made up for some company we're expecting tonight, and we've told Ruth it will be her new big girl bed. Whenever we go upstairs to the loft she likes to go and lay on it.

We are making progress, and it is great!

Oh, and two weeks until Walt Disney World!!!!

New House!

I'm sorry for the long delay in posting! The last two weeks have been very busy and exhausting. But we moved and we love our new house! We are so glad to be done with renting (hopefully) forever. Our mortgage payment is slightly higher than our rent payment, so it's incredibly affordable for us. And this house has so much potential! I took some pictures of it before we moved in all of our stuff.


This is looking into the living room from the dining room. The front entryway is on the right side. There is a lot of old wallpaper in this room and the dining room that we will be taking down. We are going to put slipcovers on our furniture that will be a darker sage green. Not sure what color to paint the living room.


This is the dining room. There's a nice window seat (I will be making a big cushion or two), and it's a fairly big room. It also has a bar, so we're going to get some bar stools. I think we're going to take down the wood paneling because I generally don't like wood paneling, and I don't really want to paint over it. We'll see, though. What do you think about the paneling?


This is a corner of Ruth's room. Her wallpaper border has unicorns on it. She loves her room and has an awesome closet. We're going to paint this room a very light sky blue color.


This is the other bedroom on the main floor. Tony and I are currently using this as our bedroom, but it will eventually be a spare bedroom/office. It's got this really cool old, glass light fixture that I need to take a picture of. We're going to clean it up and keep it. The wall color in this room is currently a very light pink. Not sure what color we will paint this room.



This is our one and only bathroom. It is currently covered in some very old wallpaper. We will be painting this room a nice light sage/celery color. It's also going to be one of our first big projects. We're going to replace the molding and base boards, vanity, and possibly the medicine cabinets.

This is the entryway to go upstairs, and you may not be able to tell this, but the stairs are very narrow and steep.




The loft spans the entire length of the house is divided into two very good sized rooms.



We've decided not to put anything upstairs yet so we can make it the first area of the house we paint. I don't know what color we will paint it, though!


This is the master bedroom. This picture doesn't do justice to how large it is.

And finally, this is our kitchen, which is ENORMOUS compared to our old kitchen:


The walls were painted using some kind of faux finish that doesn't look so hot. It also has giant florescent lights in it. Ick! My dream is to paint the walls, sand and paint the cabinets, get new flooring, and replace the florescent lights with some cool track lighting. It will probably be the last thing we get to, though.

We also have a huge unfinished basement that will be Tony's mancave and a big backyard that will probably take a couple of hours to mow. We love it!

I've already picked out the colors I want to paint a few rooms, but I'm having a lot of trouble picking out paint colors for the main living spaces. Tony is leaning more towards greys and blues for the main living spaces, while I am trying to decide if I'm brave enough to paint the living room something bold like cranberry. I think if we did that, it would probably only be an accent wall. But I don't know that I'm actually brave enough this time around! I don't have a particular style yet, although I like things to feel warm and homey. This house turned 100 years old this year, and I really want to honor the old charm of the house with our decorating. If you have any color/decorating ideas, let me know!

I have a lot more to blog about, but I'm limited on time this morning. I have some fun pictures of Ruth I've taken recently that I want to post. I also want to take some pictures of the handyman projects Tony has already completed. He's such a good handyman! My house is a total mess right now as we try to unpack, but I'll take some pictures as we get everything picked up. I'll try to blog more later today or tomorrow! Let me know what you think and if you have any ideas!